Bugs and Requested Features
= Major Bugs in Earlier Versions = Major bugs from earlier versions are listed here because they're a common FAQ on the message boards, posted by people who haven't patched their game. * In 1.0D, stock markets did not provide a greater economic boost than lesser buildings, and virtual reality centers did not provide a greater morale boost than lesser buildings. * In v1.0X and earlier, unused social spending was wasted, rather than being returned to your treasury as documented in the manual. Starting in V1.1, unusued social spending will first be rerouted to military (but no production bonuses will be applied) and then, if no military spending is set, rerouted to your treasury. * In 1.0D (?) and earlier, your graphics card could overheat. A GPU throttling option was added to prevent this. Actually, this is more of a bug on the part of graphics card and driver manufacturers than a GalCiv bug, but they added the workaround. * The "influence explosion bug" (1.0X (?) and earlier). If you captured a planet using information warfare or mini soldiers, it was possible to have more casualties than the number of troops that were on your transport. This caused the variable that stored the population to overflow, causing EXTREMELY huge populations, swamping the map with influence. = Major Bugs in Latest Version = * In v.1.1.b4.v17 and v18, Starports are indestructible! Whose crazy idea was that? = Badly Needed Bugs and Features that Haven't Been Implemented Yet = This section lists bugs and features that should be implemented, would be easy to implement, but for some bizarre reason haven't been implemented yet. The features listed here are duplicated in the corresponding sections below, where they are categorized by type. * In v.1.1.b4.v17 and v18, Starports are indestructible! Whose crazy idea was that? * Make the "planetary focus" visible on the colony governor screen. This has been requested by so many different people that I can't believe it hasn't been implemented yet. * Anomalies should respawn on the map during a game, like they did in GC1, or make this a user option. Currently, the survey ship tech is useless and the Galactic Guide Book is useless, because by the time they're discovered, all the anomalies are gone. * "No production turn after loading game" bug. If you restart galciv and load a savegame, you get zero production for the first turn after loading the save. = Minor Bugs in Latest Version = * The AI sometimes builds multiple starports on planets. This is noticable when the player culture-flips an AI planet. The bug appears to be somehow related to soil enhancement or habitat improvement. This was introduced in 1.1 beta3. (allegedly fixed in v18 -- need to confirm) * If you change a planet's military production to "nothing" from the ship production popup (colony governor screen or "build ship" on main map), the change to nothing does not take. You have to go to the colony screen to change a planet's production to "nothing". This worked properly in ealier versions and was broken recently. * If you place a modified "PlanetaryImprovements.xml" file in the mods directory, those buildings are *IN ADDITION* to the default buildings, not replacing them. * Creating new trade goods via "PlanetaryImprovements.xml" modding does not work. * Creating a mod where a social project gives a negative bonus, the negative bonuses do not work. (For example, I wanted to create a building that gives +50% industry but -50% morale and economy.) * Under certain circumstances, the "turns to complete" displays in the colony screen do not update properly. * If you put new social projects in the social production queue that add industry (i.e., factories), then the "turns to complete" does not properly update to include the new industry points that building will add. I.e., you put 6 factories in the social queue. It will list 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90 turns to complete, but the later buildings will finish much faster because of the extra mp the early buildings provide. * If an AI player starts/finishes war against another AI player, the human player does not always receive a popup notification. If the player has the highest level of espionage, you should always get a notification when the AI starts/ends a war. You can always go to the relations screen and check yourself, so the popup is merely a convenience. * If a planet stops building ships due to "shipyard full", there should be a dialog warning the player. Currently, the game silently changes production to "nothing" when this occurs. Alternatively, ships should be auto-launched when "shipyard full" occurs. * If the player has not yet built a technological capital, and he captures a planet with a technological capital from the AI, the player loses the ability to build a technological capital himself. This is particularly bad because the AI does not choose the location of its capitals particularly effectively. * If your total population goes over 1000 B, the display gets messed up. * If you destroy a starport while the planet is building something, it finishes building the ship even though the starport was destroyed. * "No production turn after loading game" bug. If you restart galciv and load a savegame, you get zero production for the first turn after loading the save. = Requested Features = User interface * For the display that shows "turns to arrive" for a ship, it sometimes disappears when you save/load a game. There also should be a black border around this text so that when the target is a planet, the number is always readable. Colony Management Many people have requested an enhanced colony governor. * Make the "planetary focus" visible on the colony governor screen. This has been requested by so many different people that I can't believe it hasn't been implemented yet. * Expand the colony governor screen. Actually, more than one colony governor screen would be needed to implement all these features. ** Display the icons that appear by a planet on the main screen, indicating if it has a starport, if it is revolting, if it has unused tiles. ** Display influence on the colony governor screen. ** Display "starport under construction" in the military production slot rather than "-", just like it says on the colony screen. ** Display the rally point on the colony governor screen, and allow the player to change the rally point from this screen. ** Display icons by a planet's name indicating if it has a capital. ** Display # of unused tiles and tile usage by project on the colony governor screen. This would necessarily require a new colony governor screen. * Don't require the player to go to the shipbuilding screen to change a planet's military production or rally point. Let this information be displayed and changed from the main colony screen. (Hey, it's just one more line of text!) * When a planet receives a bonus or penalty due to a colonization morality event, display this bonus on the main planet screen. Don't require the player to go to the "details" screen to see the bonus. (Hey, it's just one more line of text!) Rally Points * Expand the rally point popup 'T' to display more than 5 rows of text. Also, display on this screen "# of ships and colonies" going to that rally point. * Starbases that need a constructor should automatically appear as rally point options for a constructor or planets that are building constructors. * There should be a "go to nearest starbase that needs a constructor" rally point option for constructors. Ship Designer Game Configuration * Separate the control of enemy starvation/bonus and enemy intelligence, I think it would be really nice to work against a starving but really ambitous AI as opposed to the drooling generals you get today at the lower levels. ** Specifically, you should be able to enable all the AI algorithms, but have the AI play with the economic handicap it gets at values less than Intelligent". ** Also, you should be able to discretely set the AI economic handicap/boost to any arbitrary value. For example, giving the AI 105% of normal economy, somewhere between "Intelligent" and the next higher difficulty. * Better ability for user-defined hotkeys. * Anomalies should respawn on the map during a game, like they did in GC1, or make this a user option. Currently, the survey ship tech is useless and the Galactic Guide Book is useless, because by the time they're discovered, all the anomalies are gone. Mod Support * If you place a modified "PlanetaryImprovements.xml" file in the mods directory, those buildings are *IN ADDITION* to the default buildings, not replacing them. * Creating new trade goods via "PlanetaryImprovements.xml" modding does not work. * Creating a mod where a social project gives a negative bonus, the negative bonuses do not work. (For example, I wanted to create a building that gives +50% industry but -50% morale and economy.) * Multiple "mod" folders so that several different mod configuraitons could be enabled/disabled on the user's PC. * When creating custom ship components, allow the user to directly specific the component size for each hull type rather than via the cheesy/broken "sizemod" tag. Game Balance * Currently, "Industrial Sector" costs way too much. It costs 800, compared with 300 for Manufacturing Center, but it only provides 4 more mp for the extra cost. This is so bad that people try to avoid researching the tech that unlocks "industrial sector", because the game won't allow you to build lesser buildings once unlocking the better ones. ** This has been improved in 1.1 Beta 4B. Manufacturing Center costs 200 and Industrial Sector is 400. ** In case you're wondering, fsk+ is working on a "improved planetary improvements" mod that addresses such concerns. * The "zippy huge ships" problem. It is easier to build fast huge ships, and hard to build fast small ships, making tiny/small ships practically useless. The problem is that "engine size" increases disproportionally too slowly with hull size. ** fsk+ is considering working on a mod to address this problem as well = Things that likely won't change = A frequently requested feature is "Decouple the military and research spending sliders." That is, let the player fund 100% of the factories AND 100% of their research labs. Currently, a player can only use a fraction of each. Brad Wardell stated on the GalCiv 2 website that this change "would horribly break game balance". Quite frankly, I think this is untrue. (fsk+'s opinion) This change would make the game more accessible to beginners. Making this change would be equivalent to increasing the production output of everything by 50%-66%. It would require, at most, a minor tweaking of AI strategies and editing PlanetaryImprovements.xml. (m2c: I think this is mainly a balance issue concerning AI. as it acts horribly stupid in any other way it can at least shine in that area of gameplay. if it would be easily accessible the ai would loose that advantage) = Summary post from GalCiv Forum = "TheFeshy" made a nice summary post on the GalCiv Forum. I'm reproducing it here. (I hope he doesn't mind? Is this a copyright violation?) Anyway, I'm going to edit this down and integrate it with the above stuff, but I don't feel like doing this right now. ---- Oh dear. I've actually read this whole thread, though it has taken a great deal of time and many browsing sessions. There are some simply amazing ideas, and many of you have the same thoughts I do on a lot of little tweaks that would make this game truely one of the classics. I feel compelled to start off by saying that I really do like this game, and I'm sorry if this seems like one gigantic laundry list of things to fix. It *is* a gigantic laundry list of things, but nearly all of them are just little fixes for small things that occasionaly make me nuts. Great job so far -- and thanks once again for asking for user input to keep improving this game. I hope you view the massive volume of feedback this thread has generated as what is is: a sign that requests for input are what the gaming community in general, and players of this genera in particular, are *exactly* what we want. I, for one, am very appreciative (I show my appreciation by making lists, okay?) Now, since there are so many suggestions here (most of them copied straight out of previous posts -- I just want to add my "vote" to these options. Not that I'm under the illusion this is a democracy, mind you.) I've developed a ranking system, using the number of *'s to represent how important the change is to me. It breaks down like this: (****) -- "Please please please please": Send me an address, and I'll keep enough caffeine supplied to the coders that they won't NEED sleep until this feature is implimented and hand-delivered to my door. (***) -- Very important: This is the type of missing feature or bug that has me reading these forums and creating huge lists when I could be playing. Thus, it's probably in *both* our best interests to get to this quickly. (**) -- Important: Definately a helpful fix, but not one that criples game play. Most likely there's another way to get what I want; I'd just like this feature implimented to make it less of a hassle. (*) -- When you get a chance: Impliment this feature when it is convinient -- convinient being defined as "Sometime immediately after you impliment the fixes I've listed with higher priority, and somewhat before you impliment the changes requested by everyone else." Of course, this breakdown of priority is purely for humorous purposes. I don't really expect you not to sleep until the *whole* list is finished. (half will do. Okay, okay, just kidding again.) One final note before I begin: I've made only minimal effort to keep up with the beta 1.1 releases, so if some of these are already implimented there (I'm still playing 1.X) then GREAT JOB! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3 (*) A display in the trade window that shows how much techs cost in beakers, so that we can better gauge trade values. 4 (**) Make the mini-map have the same focus as the main map, so that scrolling the main map also moves the minimap. 5 (*) Make it clear what Influence starbases are doing. I do not see their effect on any planet where there is an influence starbase close by and this is REALLY hurting my ability to know if they are even working. That's a big one, far more so than any "tweak." 6 (***) Make some auto-reset or reset-button to set the races back to default so we don't have to delete files manualy to get the original races back... 7 (***) Somehow make more transparent what's going on with customization of the default races - right now, I'm quite confused about which abilities suddenly vanish when I change something and which don't. Also reveal any "hidden" bonuses (e.g. the diplomatic penalty of the Yor), and if at all possible, make these configureable for the customizable race. 8 (**) Having an "old quicksave" just like the one for autosaves would be nice. 9 (***) The "extra" turn when loading a saved game is annoying - maybe there is an easy way to remove it? 10 FIXED IN 1.1 BETA: Finally, a BIG second on being able to see starbase influence zones around constructors BEFORE you hit 'construct'. Having to quicksave/load is a hassle. 11 (***) Make saving ship designs "optional" -- a checkbox on the screen saying "make ship available in future games" would be great. 12 (*) Put in diagonal edge mouse scrolling 13 (****) An option to disable automatically selecting the next ship without orders. 14 (**) I have no idea which waypoint corresponds to which ship. Find a way to highlight the waypoint of the selected ship. * 1.1 Beta shows paths, which should help them problem --Hykin 15 (***) Maybe easy, maybe not: I really dislike the side-scrolling choice boxes (ie: how to sort the techs you have available to research). It can be cumbersome to click 3-4+ times through all the options, just to get to the sort you want, then click back through to get to a different sort. A "drop-down" box where you see all choices, then click on one is much nicer. I was happy to see that this type of box was added to the Trade screen. 16 (***) Civ. Manager: I think it would be nice if you could see and modify a planet's focus from this screen (Military production vs. social vs. research). 17 (*) Civ. Manager: how about a graph or display of some kind that shows food production vs population? Maybe tack on there the theoretical plantet max population for kicks. 18 (*) Add an 'Auto Explore and Survey' button for scout ships, that will allow them to automatically explore the galaxy as usual, but will stop exploration to survey an anomaly when it finds one. 19 (***) Add an option to *NOT* show the tech tree and homeworld build queue every time I load the game. Actually, make it apply to starting the game too. 20 (***) How about a ctrl+A hotkey that forces all ships on autopilot to complete their moves before the end of the turn? Then you can cycle through those with remaining movement. 21 (*) The ability to zoom out on the tech tree via scroll wheel would be nice. 22 (****) An undo button on ship design 23 (**) Ability to prioritize planet tile upgrades. If I have researched stock markets, and then industrial sectors, the upgrades will finish faster if I upgrade to industrial sectors and THEN stock markets. But right now, either I have to re-arrange every planet's build queue, or research them in the order I want built. 24 (**) Here is an easy one that I think people would love: IF your espionage level is high enough then during the Galactic council meeting that races vote is displayed BEFORE you vote. 25 (*) There should be a chance that if the human player's espionage is high enough they get a heads up that that race is preparing for war against them, or another race. 26 (*) A slider in the galaxy settings to adjust the number of planetary special tiles 27 (***) Starbase summary screen along the lines of the colony summary screen showing name, location, main function and whether they can be upgraded in new weapons or a new module for their primary function (2 seperate items, I'd want to know if the upgrade is for just weapons/defence OR a module relating to inf/econ/ship assist depending on the base) *Please observer that you can list all starbases via the ship list (first button). Select starbases from the list. This list does not distinguish between your SB and enemy SB, but it does show some useful information and is helpful when locating SB to upgrade --Hykin 28 (*) When upgrading a starbase, have weapons/defence and modules on seperate tabs or have some kind of filter. 29 (*)I don't think you get the tech details screen when you trade for a tech, you should. 30 (*) The colony manager screen should show you if a planet has open tiles. 31 (***) Please fix the ship hardpoints. 32 (*) I think that rather than 4 sliders - one for "overall output", and three for Military/Social/Research balance, a simpler system of 3 sliders would be better in every way. 0% to 100% output for each area, and forget the "overall output" slider. 33 (**) Context-sensitive 'view battle' option. Right now I keep having to turn 'view fleet battles only if both sides are fleets' on and off, because for taking on precursor ships or fortified starbases I want to watch and see how my ships are actually stacking up. But when I'm taking out freighters, transports, that sort of thing it's a total waste of time. What I'd like to see is a 'View Battles if Close' option, that would have you watch fights where both sides(or just yours) are liable to lose ships. 34 (**) Less predictable "who fires first" option in the game menue. As is, attacker fires first 100% of the time. What I think would spice things up is to change that to 66% of the time, plus or minus 8% for every point of speed advantage that either the attacker or defender has. This would make getting the jump on lumbering lucky rangers easy, but for that lucky ranger to sneak up on a squad of fighters almost impossible. 35 (****) The ability to set a new home planet for a freighter. Basicly, I'd like to be able to build Freighters at my man capital instead of my eco capital, as it usually takes ages to build ships in the eco capital 36 (***) The ability to reopen the GNN News after you close it. 37 (*) On the foreign policy screen it would be GREAT if I could just click a button to automatically get the max amount of money the AI player will give me for what I'm offering. That way I could sell them a tech and not have to fiddle around with the money bar to get the max BCs out of them. 38 (***) Please explain all underlying game mechanics. Manual is unclear or wrong about almost all of them. In particular the combat, influence, stat bonus, and tech progression elements of the game are at least wildly inaccurate. 39 (*) In the foreign deplomacy window under "treaties" have the ability to click on the empire icons and select them as the current empire. Just an ease-of-use thing. 40 (*) Some mini-map zoom modes do not show the complete 'ownership' when playing at 1024x resolution. 41 (***) Map scrolling speed when the map is scrolled out is too slow. 42 (****) Some way to show what planetary specials are affecting a planet! If I have a +60% to starship production on a planet, that's something I need to know, and it's something I'm going to forget the next time I load a game. . . 43 (***) I wish that when I selected a ship out of the ship viewer, it didn't then snap back to the top of the menu. I am looking for constructors, there they are, I click one and launch it from orbit, and now I have to scroll down again for each one. In bigger games, and I probably use too many starbases, its a real pain. This is just as anoying in the planets list. 44 (*) I'd like to see a numeric value for the scaling slider in the Ship Designer. Similar to some on the sliders in Options. It's tough to create like designs and match the scale by count the ticks. 45 (***) I would like to see anomalies respawn so that i can continue to find them and have use for research ships. all to often they run out way to early. and id like to be able to continue to discover them even if they only occasionally reappear. A slider on the galaxy settings screen to control this rate would be great. 46 (**) A slider to adjust the abundance of resources (the type mined by starbases) on the galaxy setup screen would also be good. 47 (***) When a ship build event occurs on the GNN it would be great if it also said (Starport now Full) if that was indeed the case 48 (*) Change autopilot navigation so that ships prefer to move diagonally (across the coner of a square) first. As it is now, they waste moves going around obstacles. 49 (**) Please: a view on the mini map or any map when on the planet screen. There is no way I can remember where each planet is when moving through them from GNN or whatver. 50 (***) The ability to 'de-emphasize' an area of spending on a planet (with the remaining 2 areas getting more spending) in addition to the current ability to 'concentrate' an area at the cost of the other 2. Being able to do either from the colony mgr screen would be helpful. - Not sure if this impact AI or not, but would sure be helpful.... 51 (***) more of a bug fix, but when you have the ship list up (on the left side of the screen), it disables all left-edge scrolling. The engine should still react if you hit the mouse against the left edge of the screen regardless of what windows you have open. 52 (**) Rings and moon indications -- what they do for production on the planet (if they do anything; I only have the outdated manual as a guess) should be listed somewhere on the planet 53 (***) Upgrade ships with planetary production rather than buying the upgrade -- a la MOO2. 54 (***) How come the "Overall" score has no relation to any other score in the game. I find that there are many times where I have already eliminated a major race from the game, beating them soundly in every category, but their "Overall" score beats mine by 3x or more!?! 55 (****) The End Turn button needs to go somewhere else. I've clicked on it about 5-8 times trying to navigate the map. 56 (***) I would like a GNN entry when a planet that was building a wonder or trade good can no longer build that project due to a rival completing it. 57 (*) Tell us how much bc each Social improvement costs, like you do with military. 58 (**) Fix the forums, its a nightmare to do anything in here. (Specifically: The back button on my browser requires double-clicking... most times. "Bonus rating" floats about the page at random. etc.") 59 (***) When moving projects around on a long social build queue (longer than can be displayed at once) the list re-focuses on the top-most item. This is extremely frustrating if the project was on the BOTTOM of that list and is now completely out of view. Please change the control to re-focus on the selected project instead. 60 (*) Allow us to play with 10 races in the game as there are 10 races in the game! 10 races + our 1 custom race! 61 (***) I like the possibility to add a custom portrait for your race. But in game you only see your logo everywhere - i would like to see the portrait for example in Civilization Manager - Stats & Graphs! There is the Name of the Leader with the Logo on the left. If you could display the portrait there instead of the logo - i would be happy 62 (***) Please remove the little “lighting flare” to the upper area of the mini-map. I assume it’s there to give “depth” to the interface, but it’s obscuring my ability to see information under it – ship range in particular. 63 FIXED IN 1.1 BETA (using color-coded resources): (**) PROBLEM: Ambiguous starbase icons in 3D tactical view, unable to tell what resource type it is. (have to zoom in a lot to see, which is troublesome). Add the resource type to the starbase name. 64 (***) When you double click on a social project and it automatically goes to the next tile, it should *NEVER* go to a "soil enhancement" tile unless that's the only thing left for the planet to build. 65 (*) If a minor race claims a resource, it won't show up as an option for me to trade for it on the trade screen. Minor races shouldn't claim resources (or they should be willing to trade them if they get them). Apparently, minor races don't offer to trade ships. -- Note: In my last game, nearly 50% of the resources were claimed by minor races! With no other options available to them (e.g. colonizing) resource aquisition was their only priority. 66 (**) Please increase the maximum allowable sensor range from 15pc to 30pc. Or heck, even documenting that there is a maximum sensor range, and indicating it in the build screen, would be handy. 67 (**) Sort the GNN list in some way. Mostly, I just want big, important things up top (such as building a technological capitol) rather than sifting through the dozens of small factories and what not opening on dozens of worlds) 68 (***) Apply excess social to the next item in the build queue. 69 (***) Apply excess military production to next ship desired. 70 (*) In the Ship Builder, it'd be great to have mock Engines, mock Weapons, and mock Modules available in the 'Extras' tab. They'd use the same models as their real couterparts, but be just for show. 71 (**) Starbase affects should not overlap in an additive way. That is, two economy starbases should not *both* add affects to a planet that is under the influence area of both; only the highest value should apply. 72 (***) An option in the galaxy generation screen to not start with the two free ships. 73 (*) Allow longer names for ships and starbases, like 50 characters; I like 'em as big as they are complex. I really hate not being able to give my starbases ridiculously unwieldy names. 74 (***) When you build a new ship the launch should default to launch this ship. Not the one you have left there to protect your planet 75 (****) A "sentry until wakend by me" option for ships. 76 (***) The game says "with advanced espionage, no futher spending is needed". Then why do you allow the player to spend more on espionage after receiving "advanced" level? Turn off that spending in that case. (I thought you needed to keep some espionage spending if you wanted to be able to steal tech?) 77 (***) Option to have a ship pause during a move if an enemy comes into view. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well... that was a bit much. And most were repreats of previous posters, of course. And some, no doubt, are implimented in the beta and I just haven't read about them yet.